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All posts in category Cancer

Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously kept quiet about his illness and while a rare form of pancreatic cancer was at the root of his struggles, the company’s announcement of his death yesterday didn’t include information about the precise cause.

No Coverage for Avastin: Blue Shield of California will no longer pay for the use of the drug Avastin to treat breast cancer, the New York Times reports. Blue Shield is apparently the first large insurance company to end payments since a federal advisory committee recommended in June that the Food and Drug Administration rescind Avastin’s approval as a treatment for breast cancer …

Gents, a new study suggests you should be receiving screening for colon cancer before females, since you have an increased chance of both polyps and the disease itself.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, covered more than 44,000 Austrian screening-program participants, with an average age of about 61 years. Across all ages, 24.9% of men and polyps or lesions and 8% had advanced polyps, vs. 14.8% and 4.7% of women. Looking at colon cancer itself …

A Path to Approval: Reversing an earlier decision, the FDA has cleared a path to approval for a medical device made by Mela Sciences that aims to help doctors more accurately diagnose melanoma, the WSJ reports. MelaFind is “approvable” pending some final negotiations, the FDA told the company last week; previously the agency had called on the company to conduct a large new study. The device is already approved for use in 27 European countries, the paper says …

Defending PBM Combination: The CEOs of pharmacy-benefit managers Express Scripts and Medco Health Solutions defended their proposed merger before a House antitrust subcommittee yesterday, pointing to the entrance of new competitors to the market, including UnitedHealth, Dow Jones Newswires reports. Express Scripts Chief Executive George Paz also said the deal wouldn’t make sense if the FTC requires the divestiture of mail-order or specialty-pharmacy businesses …

Pulling Fruit: Colorado-based Jensen Farms is recalling cantaloupes sold between July 29 and Sept. 10 on fears that they might be tainted by listeria bacteria, the WSJ reports. A multi-state outbreak of listeriosis has sickened 16 people and killed one of them, but the FDA and Colorado public-health authorities have not indicated whether the farm’s cantaloupes are the source of the outbreak, the paper says …

Cancer Among 9/11 Responders: Research published in the Lancet finds that firefighters who worked at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks were 19% more likely to later develop cancer than firefighters who didn’t work at the site, the WSJ reports. Still, experts and study authors said the study isn’t definitive and that it will take many years for data on cancer incidence to accumulate. In addition, the number of cases wasn’t large enough to draw conclusions about the rates of specific cancers, the paper says …

Men and Women, Sleeping: Men and women sleep differently, with women experiencing deeper sleep, waking up fewer times during the night, and tolerating a lack of shut-eye better than men — even as men report greater overall satisfaction with their sleeping patterns, the WSJ reports. Research into gender and sleep differences may help explain the generally better health status of women compared to men, the paper says …

Melanoma Treatment Option: The FDA approved vemurafenib, a treatment from Roche Holding and Daiichi Sankyo aimed at the half of metastatic melanoma patients whose cancer is driven by a specific genetic mutation, the WSJ reports. The treatment, to be sold under the brand name Zelboraf, will be taken for about six months and will cost about $56,400, according to Roche …

Hospitals are offering a new service to cancer patients: navigators to help them steer through the often-overwhelming maze of decisions, doctor visits and treatments, today’s Informed Patient Column reports.

Researchers across the country have been studying patient navigator programs for several years in an attempt to determine how best they can help patients — and how exactly they should be designed and staffed; a new supplement to the journal Cancer is devoted to the issue.

More Victims: An estimated 107 people in 31 states have fallen ill from salmonella-tainted ground turkey, up from the previous total of 78 victims in 26 states, the WSJ reports, citing updated figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One death has been linked to the turkey, which was produced by Cargill. The company has recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey …

Serial Killers: Genetically engineering certain immune-system cells to identify and then destroy a certain protein found on leukemia cells can put patients into sustained remission from their cancer, the WSJ reports. Research on three people published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine shows that the treatment has harsh side effects, however, and much larger studies are needed to prove that it works. The genetic immunotherapy will also be studied in other cancers …

Reversal of Course: The federal government won’t try to force the resignation of Forest Laboratories CEO Howard Solomon after the company last year plead guilty to drug-marketing misdemeanors, the WSJ reports. Solomon wasn’t named in the criminal action but the government had sought to exclude him from doing business with the government under a clause of the Social Security Act …

It’s Merck’s Turn: Merck reported a second-quarter profit increase in line with analysts’ expectations, affirmed its revenue guidance for the full year and said it would cut as many as 13,000 additional jobs by the end of 2015, Dow Jones Newswires reports. Profit rose to $2.02 billion, or 65 cents a share, up from $752.4 million, or 24 cents a share, a year earlier, helped by a $1.34 billion tax benefit. Excluding restructuring and other charges, earnings rose to 95 cents from 86 cents, in line with forecasts by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters …

That point was reinforced by a study published yesterday by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. It found that computer-aided detection technology, intended to help radiologists interpret mammograms, is associated with more false-positive findings but doesn’t help detect more cancers …

Chip-Factory Cancer Cases: Samsung Electronics Co. says a report by consulting firm Environ International found no link between cancer in six workers and the chemicals they were exposed to at a semiconductor manufacturing facility, the WSJ reports. Previous reports by South Korea’s occupational health and safety agency have also found no link. But Samsung workers and others have said there were far more leukemia and lymphoma cases among chip-factory workers. Data from the latest study are not being immediately released …

Curbing HIV: Two new studies show the same drugs used to treat HIV infection can also be used to lower the risk of heterosexual transmission of the virus, the WSJ reports. The studies, conducted in Africa, showed antiretroviral drugs marketed by Gilead Sciences could help cut the risk of infection by at least 62%. Research has previously shown that one of the drugs can help reduce transmission of the virus in gay and bisexual men by 44% – 73% when taken every day, as directed …

Controversy over Planned Parenthood has drawn new attention to the use of fetal tissue for medical research, a decades-old practice that remains common in some fields even as alternatives are explored.